So, you want to lose weight but you’re not sure how?
How about we tell you about the 8 worst fad diets so you can know what NOT to do and then you can reverse engineer, take the good from the bad and put your own diet plan together for the results you want.
Every year hopeful people just like you start out on their weight loss journey. Some make it and some don’t. The ones that were on these following fad diets were on the list of don’ts.
Continue reading to find out what they are.
The Worst Fad Diets You’ve Got to Know About
If you’ve ever done one of these fad diets, you’re sure to know why it was so bad. For the ones that you missed – let’s get into it.
1. Keto Diet
While plenty of people are hopping on board the Keto train, USC raises some valid concerns. Sure, some people are losing hundreds of pounds using this strategy — but to what end?
This high fat, moderate protein and super low carb diet is getting its followers results. Most people are dieting to lose weight and the keto diet will help you do that but what about your overall health?
This diet puts you at risk of malnutrition and causes other problems so make sure you steer clear of this crazy fad.
2. Liquid Diet
No solid foods allowed. How would you like to drink every meal every day?
It gets worse. The liquid diet wasn’t food beat to a pulp but instead was alcohol!
William the Conqueror lost a great deal of weight going on a nearly all alcohol diet after gaining a large amount of weight. He did lose the pounds but soon after he lost his life while riding his horse — possibly drunk?
3. Cleanses
We’ve all seen some interesting cleanses but one of the most popular cleanses that hit the scene was the Master Cleanse. The Master Cleanse was also known as the lemonade diet.
While Stanley Burroughs started this cleanse in the 1940s, it was Beyonce that got everyone started on it again when she claimed to have lost 20 pounds in a short 2 week time period.
To do the Master Cleanse, all you needed was lemon or lime juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and water. That’s all.
Drink this 6 times a day for 10 days and you’ve completed the Master Cleanse.
4. Chewing Diet
Yes, we all are going to chew our food but one Horace Fletcher got people on board for more chewing to lose weight. His theory was that if you chewed your food until it was liquid, you were less likely to overeat.
He did lose quite a bit of weight doing the chewing diet but I wonder how his jaws felt about this strategy.
5. Tapeworm Diet
If you want to talk about crazy AND disgusting diets then let’s talk about the tapeworm diet. To take part in the tapeworm diet, you would swallow a tapeworm (or for the more faint of heart — a tapeworm pill) and let the tapeworm live in your stomach so it could eat some of the food that you consumed.
Since you were sharing food with the tapeworm, you would be able to eat more food without having to worry about gaining weight.
The thing about doing the tapeworm diet is that it only worked in theory. You hoped that the tapeworm would eat the extra calories and allow you to escape the table unaffected but no one can be sure if it worked that way.
The tapeworm diet meant willingly giving yourself a tapeworm infection which can be extremely dangerous. It could cause diarrhea, weakness and even fever.
6. Grapefruit Diet
Another diet that champions a single food for the cure to all your weight gain woes in the grapefruit diet.
While the diet aside from the grapefruit part wasn’t too crazy, you did have to eat or drink grapefruit before every single thing that you consumed. Apparently, there are fat burning enzymes in the grapefruit that were supposed to give the dieter massive results in a short amount of time.
While people were getting results, the massive consumption of grapefruit meant some people experienced interaction and interference with medications they were taking which caused even more serious problems for them.
7. Ice Cream Diet
A diet any true dairy lover could get behind — the ice cream diet. The whole hook of the diet was that you could lose weight while eating ice cream every day.
Ice cream lovers rejoice!
The only thing is that it was ONLY a hook. The diet truly was a calorie restricted diet and any diet that is calorie restricted is going to promote weight loss no matter what you’re eating.
8. Cabbage Soup Diet
The cabbage soup diet is built around consuming cabbage soup for seven days. The dieter is allowed to eat as much cabbage soup as they want so if they get hungry throughout the diet — soup, soup, soup!
The diet promised weight loss up to 17 pounds in a given week by following the outlined diet. The diet also came back under many other names but the same cabbage soup.
Continue Your Health Education
Now that you know more about the worst fad diets, don’t stop your education here. There are plenty of other things you can learn that will help you protect yourself from passing fads.
Bookmark your favorite parts of our site and come back to read when you’re ready for more.
